This Ain't Warcraft

[Occhidiangela]

It's a well known fact that al-Zarquawi abhors Shi'ites as the worst kind of heretics, he considers them idolators! The attack in Samarra was probly carried out on his direct orders and by non-Iraqi jihadis ((local Sunnis wouldn't have carried out the attack because they wouldn't risk the Shi'ite backlash). Basically al-Zarqawi wants the Americans out and the Shi'ites crushed, thus turning Iraq into the first Emirate of a reborn Caliphate!

BTW, the Iranian president has blamed the attack on the Zionists. You win one cold Becks B)

The way I see it there are two viable options for the US:

1. Forget all about democracy and nation-building, team up with the Shi'ites to crush the Sunnis and then leave.

2. Just leave and let them solve the conflict in their own way.

As regards the whole US intervention in Iraq I am reminded of Talleyrands best quote:

"It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake"
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Cold Becks, yummy! :D

The Talleyrand quote is fitting. Thanks. :D

Teaming up with Shi'ites plays into Iran's hands, regionally strategically that is moronic. It also pisses off not a few local allies, who also think of Shia a idolators.

"Let them fight" would have been a good policy in June 2003. Not taken. It would have been a great policy in Bosnia, not taken. Nearly taken in Rwanda. Whoa, half a million dead. So what? Let them fight in Iraq, a million or so dead I'd guess. So what?

I don't much care if they all kill each other, for then the Kurds would be the winners, and we can work with them. Maybe that is the real plan. Let the Shia and Sunni kill each other, Kurds take over . . . but the local regional actors would not just sit by and let that happen, eh? Nor would I blame them for getting involved.

I don't see "so what" as a policy an American president could undertake, not with the problem in the international media and international community that America has already caused for itself.

If you look to a couple of days ago, the American Ambassador Khalilzad made a very paternalistic, arrogant, possibly offensive statement to both warring factions: in a nutshell, if they don't get along and drop the sectarian infighting, the Americans won't support their rebuilding efforts, won't support -- spend billions -- on critical institutions and infrastructure much longer.

Basically, what he said was "you guys get along or we leave and take our money with us." Meant or not, it was probably perceived that way by some, and spun that way by others.

Ya gotta hand it to that rube, he adds his to a long list of idiotic public utterances by mouthpiece for clumsy diplomacy and absentee statesmanship, not to mention raw folly. Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly was written about decision making contradictory to national interest.

Apparently, both Shia and Sunni clerics commented on that rhetoric as culpable foolishness in this case, and marked it as an open invitation to any number of players as an unintentional "I dare you to stir something up."

*slaps head*

SASO and "nation building" are hard; nearly impossible when done stupidly.

Occhi